Homework is Fun, Boring, Exciting, Awful ....

One of the peculiar things our society does is go out of its way to teach kids that homework is a nasty business. The media makes that clear: consider all the TV ads that show miserable students stuck in classrooms and happy students browsing through the mall, buying things. Teachers also send this message by assigning homework as punishment. Since homework is a nasty business, many students try to get through it as soon as possible, or avoid it as much as possible. Teachers found out that students didn't like homework, and in many classes, the amount of assigned (or at least collected) homework dwindles down to one hour's worth a week --- and occasionally zero. And the teachers make that toothless threat: ``just wait until you get to college.''

Well, welcome to College. The time has come to face the homework, and to face the fact that our attitude has a profound effect on how well we do homework.

Attitude has a powerful effect on everything we do. Smile, and the whole world smiles with you, says the poet; cry, and you cry alone. During the last decade, social scientists have found that optimists live longer, accomplish more, earn more, and win more elections. Neurologists are busy tracking down the chemical apparatus of attitude, which turns out to have powerful effects on how our projects turn out, as well as our susceptibility to heart disease and cancer. Optimists get along better socially, they get more things done and, perhaps not so surprisingly, win more Presidential elections.

Compare two chores:

• Making out a list of things you'll do with the $ 1,000 you just won in the lottery.

• Writing a note apologizing to a neighbor for breaking his stained glass window with a baseball.

So here's the problem. We've been brainwashed into thinking that homework is unpleasant. This makes homework more difficult to do. Of course, there are some kindly people who tell us that we really like to do homework, that once we get into it we will find it fun, etc., etc., etc., but we don't really believe that. Unfortunately, when we try to do something that is unpleasant, we take longer doing it, we do a poor job because we are impatient to get it over with, and it takes a lot of energy and is demoralizing. So after doing the homework, we are demoralized and thus even less able to deal with future assignments. So what do we do?

The first step is to understand the problem. There are at least two things involved.

• Homework is weird. While doing homework, we often traverse various states of consciousness that we find unfamiliar. In an extreme state of concentration, we might find ourselves in the mental equivalent of trying to push a Mack truck up a hill --- and you have no idea how high the hill is.

• Homework is discouraging. Few things (like pulling out splinters) are unpleasant in themselves. Mostly, things are unpleasant because we have formed positive or negative associations with them. Homework can be associated with frustrations or humiliations in the past, so in the present we remember frustration or humiliation, and perhaps fear more of the same. So we don't want to do it.

Before going on, we should mention that some experts in creativity, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, recommend getting into a state of consciousness called ``flow'', which is essentially the same state of consciousness one is in when playing a game. This is not an unpleasant state to be in, and I will discuss this state in the page on states of consciousness. For the moment, note that we are probably talking about how to get into a state of ``flow,'' and this includes obstacles like weirdness and discouragement. There is an additional problem, that even if you can't get into a state of flow about some weird or discouraging problem, the homework still needs to get done on time, so you still need to get into a state of consciousness in which you can function.

Let's look at the first problem first. The basic problem is the sense of unfamiliarity or unpleasantness one has of doing homework. Much of this feeling tends to go away once you get started. The reason is that this feeling is associated with a state of anxiety (a mild state of ``stress''); when doing homework in a state of alertness, one's attention is directed outward rather than inward, and one is less aware of one's anxieties. So the trick to dealing with this problem is to get started; see the page on States of Consciousness.

Let's go into the second problem in more detail. The Inuit Indians believe that every human being is accompanied by a little green man who tells his perpetual victim that he's no good, that he's never going to succeed, that he's stupid, and that he should give up. More scientific psychologists call this ``self-talk'': there is a part of our mind that generates this corrosive criticism. Little green men are not well-understood (we aren't quite sure of where they come from) but they have been linked to negativity from low test scores to clinical depression. The question is: what do we do about them?

Let's look at this from the state of consciousness point of view. If you are listening to a little green man tell you that you are going to fail at homework, you are being distracted from the homework itself, and it is not getting done. Time's awastin', and you are feeling worse and worse. You need to redirect your attention to the homework, and away from your obnoxious guest. What do you do?

• Unscientific approaches. Little green men --- or if you are of a more Eurocentric frame of mind, demons --- have been fended off by using various rituals. The trick is that you usually have to believe in the ritual for it to work. Certain religions --- Buddhism, some animist religions --- are good at this; some Buddhist mental exercises can help even non-Buddhists. Even prosaic religions like Christianity have rituals (e.g., reciting rosaries) that can help. But for skeptics ...

• Scientific approaches. Psychotherapy was the first approach attempted, but even when it works, it takes years. Approaches known to work under laboratory conditions include:
  • Forcibly turning your attention away from the self-talk. This is just a brutal exercise of will-power. Some people can do this, others have problems.
  • Displace negative talk with positive talk. This positive talk can be self-compliments and reassurances that you have prepared in advance. Or it can be arguments that you compose at the time.
  • Distraction: turn your attention to a third topic, in order to shut the little green man up, and then return to your homework after a few moments when it seems safe.
  Whatever you do, don't just sit and take it. For more on this, see Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism.

In fact, there self-talk techniques to get into a more positive frame of mind, so you can more confidently do things. You can prepare positive things to say or, better yet, write down. This shouldn't be stuff you just make up, but that you write down as you succeed in things, so you can look at what you have been successful at in the past. These techniques are also described in Learned Optimism. And there are other techniques. Predictably, we start with Buddhist exercises. For example, in Thích Nhât Hanh's book The Miracle of Mindfulness there are a number of non-verbal visualization and kinesthetic exercises designed to enter a more alert, aware, compassionate, or flow-like state of consciousness.

The point is this. A lot of what you can do depends on your self-confidence and positivity, and these can be modified, without, say, Prozac. Your emotions should be your tools, not your masters. And you must control them, or they will control you.